Making my way back into Early Childhood Education

Jennifer Fane - Flinders University

I have greatly been enjoying my role as an Associate Lecturer in Health Education here at Flinders University. But when a course came up in the Early Childhood degrees program that needed a topic coordinator, Early Childhood Health and Physical Education, I jumped at the chance to combine my two areas of expertise into a teacher education course. This particular course enjoys a partnership with a Childcare Centre on campus, allowing the students extra hands on teaching opportunities with young children in childcare settings, and allowing for extremely authentic student assessment tasks.

As the newest member of the ECE team, I was featured in a Q & A in the latest edition of the Early Childhood at Flinders University newsletter. Here's a link to the newsletter, and the Q & A is on page 4.
It's been great to be welcomed by the excellent and supportive ECE team here at Flinders, and I look forward to my continued involvement in Early Childhood Teacher Education both on and off campus.

Lessons from Policy Makers

The 2013 ATEA (Australian Teacher Education Association) conference theme was Knowledge Makers and Notice Takers: Teacher education research impacting policy and practice, with the discourse in and out of sessions, and the keynote addresses being how can teacher education research make a difference in educational policy?

Teacher education research is grounded in pedagogy, theory, and best practices for students, teachers, and teacher educators alike, yet it is often ignored and overlooked by policy makers. The question then becomes, how can teacher educators conduct and present research in a way likely to be noticed and listened to by policy makers, as no matter how meaningful the research is, if it doesn't inform change it's of little use.

In spirit of the theme, the conference did have empowering speakers who did in fact speak to ways that teacher educators can work towards informing policy, such as working together across national and international divides to create larger scale research, and the creation of an educational databased controlled by teachers, for teachers to share knowledge and research. However, it was the Plenary Forum discussion on the final day that, perhaps, was most telling in the discourse between teacher educators and policy makers.

The panel participating in the discussion included policy makers  alongside academics/researchers in teacher education and administrators in the high schooling sector. Each shared a little about their work, or the challenges facing teacher education, but was most remarkable was the words that were repeated in their addresses. Recurrent words and phrases were "teacher quality", "teacher training", "training institutions", and the sharing of a personal account of one's practicum being a "waste of time".

From these comments, placed innocently within speeches under the guise of supporting teacher education, I surmise that the greatest hurdle for teacher educators informing policy is the constant attack on the professionalism of teachers and our value to shaping education policy. While I was aghast at these comments from members of the panel, I was certainly not alone. The conference used an app called GoSoapBox give attendees the opportunity to ask questions and discuss conference proceedings. The palatable devaluing of teacher professionalism was evident in many of my colleagues comments:

Teacher quality is the most insulting term in Education. Why is it used? It sets up a premise that teachers aren't quality.

Is 'teacher training' and 'training institutions' the most appropriate language for teacher educators to use in promoting their work in higher education?

Much discussion also ensued over the idea that Universities were wholly responsible for creating teachers who were 100% ready for schools the second the leave teacher education spaces, and that schools and education sectors do not need to play a role in supporting pre-service and early career teachers:

Why can't we leave time for a new teacher to learn about the context in which they begin teaching?

How can they be teacher ready if schools dont mentor PSTs?

Why can't we leave time for a new teacher to learn about the context in which they begin teaching?

Demanding that pre-service teachers leave teacher education ready to face anything the classroom can throw at them when educational research continually shows the need for early career teachers to continually develop skills and grow from mentorship and networks, continually devalues the work of teacher educators and attacks the professionalism of teachers through an impossible standard of "quality control" in education. 

This constant push from government and policy makers to control education and teachers in order to improve education is exactly what is halting the high quality of research, practice, and discourse of teachers in attempt to improve education. Policy makers devalue teachers and their work, yet teachers are the very professionals with the experience and knowledge to make education better. Beck's theory of risk management, where fear of poor quality leads to tighter controls, resulting thusly in poor quality is very much alive and well in current educational policy.

While it is extremely discouraging to hear this stark reality at a teacher education conference, it is extremely telling of the work educators have to do in shifting policy makers to value teachers as professionals and our work as grounded in theory, research, and best practices.

Despite an rather non inspirational panel discussion, I am extremely thankful for spaces such as teacher educator conferences where we can work towards the goal of informing policy and presenting ourselves and our work as the professionals we are. If we don't believe in and support our profession, who will?

Paper presentation at the Australian Teacher Education Association 2013 conference in Brisbane

I am attending the ATEA 2013 conference in Brisbane this year, to not only take part in the Teacher Education community in Australia, but to also present my peer reviewed conference paper entitled:

Whose job is this anyways?: Health skilling through cooperative teaching partnerships in early childhood settings

The paper is still under peer review, but here is the abstract that I presented at the conference.

As Health Education and the initiatives associated with it become increasingly mandated into curriculum, cooperative teaching may offer a framework for bringing together classroom teachers with experts in the field; combing knowledge of teaching with specific health knowledge and practical skills. Currently, school-community partnerships, particularly with health and safety organizations, are common place in most schools. While they are prevalent, however, partnerships often lack in support, funding, and recognition of their benefits. With the increasing need for health education in classrooms, cooperative teaching with health agencies may offer a valuable approach.

Cooperative teaching in special needs and inclusive education has been a highly researched and well documented instructional approach in classrooms. Co-teaching relationships such as teacher-teacher, teacher-special education teacher, teacher-principal, and teacher-graduate student/researcher have demonstrated that cooperative teaching can result in increased program and instructional success, benefitting both students and collaborators. Health skilling, a constructivist approach to health education for young learners, offers a model for engaging teachers and community partners in meaningful cooperative teaching practice.

This article discusses a Canadian pilot project between classroom teacher and a Police Tertiary Education Institute, and its implications in creating school-community partner cooperative teaching partnerships in a kindergarten classroom.

Teacher-community partner co-teaching partnerships offer an efficient and practical approach for both parties to meet their mandates and engage students in health knowledge and skills that can contribute to life-long health practices. Discussed are considerations in choosing and building relationships with community partners, curricular implications, complications, and school-community benefit.

Developing a systematic model for creating and sustaining teacher-community partner cooperative teaching partnerships offers a comprehensive and practical approach for teachers and community partners looking to increase the effectiveness of teaching Health Education and health skills within the classroom.

The paper centred on a pilot project I was working while working towards a Masters of Education degree in Canada. The presentation went well, and I received valuable peer feedback that  an international perspective on teacher education was of benefit to conference attendees.

I greatly enjoyed the symposiums, paper, and poster presentations my peers presented and valued above all the chance to learn more about teacher education in my new Australian context, and the chance to network with other teacher educators at the national level.